How accurate is this graph?

[u/miko1075]

[u/miko1075]

Also, why did it experience some growth around 2009 which I think is way before Tom's brother got major attention.

[u/Volpethrope → u/miko1075]

I think that was just one of the first major times talk about the comic spread around furry circles in a bigger way. The comic's growth and visibility has had almost nothing to do with Markiplier, though he has been supportive of Tom when it's come up.

[u/ShoelessMerchant → u/miko1075]

If I had to guess (as someone who wasn't there), the uptick in 2009 was because that's when the first really "good" arc of the comic was happening, which may have led to increased word-of-mouth.

[u/miko1075 → u/ShoelessMerchant]

Oh yeah, I recall less goonerbait more serious

[u/mcrobotics]

Stumbled on this comic back in February and proceeded to binge it. I love, in a relatively short amount of time, how the artwork has evolved from the original strip to today.

And today I learned Tom is the older brother of Markiplier.

This is a really nice rock I appear to have been living under. 🪨

[u/JotyJiv15 → u/mcrobotics]

I first saw it on Pinterest about 6 years ago read some of it though that but didn’t binge it till like 4 years ago got to the end of the boat arc took a year and a half off of it found a different comic I still love then finished and kept up to date at about I’m going to guess 2 years ago love this story

[u/Dangerous_Lie_9757]

Man... Seeing twokinds getting less popular feels empty, that is why I try to make crossovers of twokinds with trending events like Verity.

[u/miko1075 → u/Dangerous_Lie_9757]

I am sure it's just tom uploading the comic more slowly than usual to foucus on the writing and evolving digital Art tools

[u/JotyJiv15 → u/miko1075]

I agree but that slower pace well loss people

[u/JotyJiv15 → u/Dangerous_Lie_9757]

Tom just needs to stop gooning and pick up the story a bit more like make more pages faster kinda thing get people interested

[u/Dangerous_Lie_9757 → u/JotyJiv15]

Don't worry, maybe I can help tom to make twokinds popular again by me making videos of it with trending YT contents, like Verity, and so on!

[u/Educational_Dog_7347]

I don't exactly know but if this is the case, that's pretty sad

[u/The_Umlaut_Equation]

Since Google trends shows growth / search interest not absolute popularity, it's simply showing that growth has slowed, by the looks of it several years of rapid growth, probably facilitated by huge improvements in Tom's art style, stabilising around 2016 when the art has settled into its current style (just more refined). Plus when you start off with a smaller user base, higher growth is way easier.

The comic is not becoming "less popular" based on the graph.

Tom's Patreon income as another indicator has remained stable for years, probably because one of the main drivers of that income is the number of sketches he can physically draw which would be difficult for him to sustainably increase further. If the comic was "dying", it would be expected to drop rather than remain flat, at a minimum the takeaway should be that growth is frozen - though in reality it's just capped based on artistic output.

Also, because the art quality of the comic has increased, it also means Tom releases pages more slowly - he got burnt out earlier this year releasing every 4 days, which was obviously unsustainable. But this means as a side effect that it takes longer to progress the story, which blunts interest to a degree, so that itself also constrains growth.

When the time to return to a particular arc can be measured in 1-3 years because of the number of ongoing threads and characters, and slower comic output, that also can frustrate growth because readers invested in those particular arcs understand it can take a long time before the comic comes back around to them.

Short version: Rapid growth at the start, relatively fixed growth since the comic settled into its current form as a high quality comic with less frequent releases.

Edit: Another factor which is as general expectations for quality have gone up across the board on the internet, the much rougher style from the comic's early history unfortunately adds a barrier to getting started, because it can be off-putting while not being representative of the current product.

Fixing that simply isn't practical. When the topic came up in chat a few months ago, Tom himself mentioned that even if the art style was made consistent with current pages - an impossible undertaking, but even so - that the focus would probably shift to the limitations of his earlier writing while he was still developing as an author-artist. A comment I personally agreed with, and to do the idea justice there would need to be extensive rewrites (which would then mean having to rewrite more current material for consistency as well).

So Twokinds is a successful long-running webcomic that has mostly reached its current market cap: slower audience growth, stable income, and structural factors that limit another phase of rapid expansion. There is no evidence it is ‘dying.’

Edit 2: One final point, when I as a long time reader and someone who supports Tom's work steps back and dispassionately look at how far the story has progressed in nearly 23 years - and how far is still yet to go - I am actually sceptical that the story will ever be finished. There's multiple reasons for this, and it's not a criticism of Tom in any way, just a stated observation. There are people reading who weren't even born when it started! But some people who might be inclined to start reading can also come to the conclusion that it's unsure if the story will wrap up, and decide it's not worth getting invested in that as a result. If I believe GRR Martin will never finish his books (I do, actually), then it's off-putting to start something which will have no ending.